defiant to the end, we hear the call
by egelantier
Summary: Gladio and Ignis get swept off the bridge by the Deathclaw, and have to make their way back to Noct through the snow and ice. It wouldn't be a problem, except that Gladio's leg is broken, and Ignis doesn't seem to be as unaffected by the fall as he's pretending.


The Six-damned Deathclaw is a major pain in Gladio's ass, and having to fight him in sub-zero temperatures, either knee-deep in snow or slipping on patchy ice, under the Glacian's dead and judgmental gaze is not improving his disposition any. But on the other hand, fighting daemons is as good a workout as any, and maybe Gladio would take it over the oppressive heaviness of their train car, and over fretting for Prompto, and feeling still-smoldering embers of his anger at Noct, and trying not to look at Ignis' subtly hunched, defeated posture.

Fighting is cleaner and clearer, even though Gladio's so cold he can barely feel his toes. And no matter how much heat the Deathclaw packs, or how much it sucks not being able to rely on Ignis properly, or how unpleasant it is to fight without long-range support, they still almost have it - and then the Deathclaw swings his heavy tail, and Gladio knows Noct won't warp away in time.

He dives for him, slamming Noct away from the attack, so the tail smashes into him instead and sweeps him off the bridge with insulting ease. His legs crumble under him, and yet he has a moment to feel bitterly satisfied with himself; it's the most Shield-like he's been in ages and ages, and it's almost enough...

A gloved hand arrests Gladio's fall, wrenching his shoulder out of its socket. There's blood in his eyes and his mouth, and in the swirling wail of the snowstorm he can just glimpse a furious scowl on Ignis' mouth. He hears the slither of leather over ice - and they plummet over the edge.

* * *

The world spins around Gladio, a sickening kaleidoscope of white and grey and black, and in the middle of their frenetic fall Ignis, who never let go of Gladio's hand, pulls closer to him, wraps around him in a parody of a lover's embrace - ridiculous, Gladio has time to think, rage overflowing him, they're going to go splat in a moment, how dare he?..

There's a roar in his ears that he thinks comes from his blood, but Ignis is shouting in his ear - the river, the river! - and just as Gladio adds those things together, just in time to take a desperate breath and clamp his jaws shut, they plunge into the water together and go down and under.

The shock of the impact is tremendous. They enter the water roughly at the right angle, feet first, and so the slap of it makes all the damage caused by the Deathclaw's tail flare up in one unbearable cacophony. Gladio gets lost for a while - up and down and sideways, agony, he can't find the boundaries of his body, it's just disorder and darkness, and he can't, he can't - somebody's hand, clamped mercilessly over his mouth and nose, and he can't breathe, if he could only breathe - he drives his head back, feels the satisfying crunch of cartilage under the back of his skull, but the hold strangling him doesn't slacken -

\- and the body behind him strains and heaves, bearing them both up, and as Gladio's head breaks the surface, reality reasserts itself. Ignis releases his mouth and nose, and Gladio hauls in a desperate breath. The river tosses them around, carries them down, too fast and strong to be iced over, and Gladio grabs Ignis' arm and points him towards one of the banks, where some scraggly dead trees are climbing down to the water.

"This way," he shouts, and tries to get his own body to propel them in the right direction; his left leg responds despite the cold-shocked sluggishness, but the right one explodes with such pain he almost sends them both under again.

Ignis hisses something into his ear that gets lost in the water, and drags him upward again; he strains roughly in the right direction, and Gladio kicks with his good leg as best he can. By some unbelievable bit of grace they make it close enough that Gladio manages to grab one of the hanging branches and arrest their tumble down the current.

He feels the ground under his questing foot, and they drag each other out of the water, onto the dubiously frigid safety of the shore.

Gladio stops himself from faceplanting into the snow with a superhuman effort; Ignis half-supports, half drags him further from the shore, until they both collapse at a safe distance from the water, into a long and heartfelt silence.

"Shit," Gladio says, finally, and doesn't recognize his voice. He has to physically pry Ignis' stiff, unbending fingers from his jacket. Ignis face is a frightful bloody mask, and the telltale bend in his nose fills Gladio with remorse and then makes his rage flare up anew.

"You fucking idiot," he says; he makes an attempt to surge to his feet and collapses back again, too winded to scream when his leg and shoulder wake up into new, inventive agony. "What the hell were you thinking? You left him up there!"

Ignis' face contorts at that, but he stays silent. Gladio feels him tugging at the Armiger, and nods, despite himself, at the Firaga flask that appears.

Ignis pats the ground clumsily, and Gladio reaches out, helps him map out a safe space between them, and activates the flask. He'd like to tear into Ignis further, make him at least acknowledge the sheer idiocy of his actions - even though Ignis had clearly saved his life, in this fall - but he can feel the sluggish unresponsiveness of his limbs, the slowness of cold coming in, and it takes precedence.

The fire flares up, thank fucking gods for magic, because Gladio is pretty sure that if they had to build it for real, between his busted leg and Ignis' blindness, that would be it. He shifts closer to it and this time groans, unable to stop himself.

"Let me check," Ignis says, hoarse, and Gladio doesn't miss the way he's choosing not to engage with his words at all. It pisses him off, the way Ignis won't fight these days, no matter what Gladio throws at him. Even at Cartanica, Ignis chose to aim his little speech at Noct, not at him, and Gladio hates it with all he has. The Ignis he knows would never let him have the last word, not when it comes to Noct; this Ignis is a doppelganger. Guilt and defeat and failure roll into a solid ball deep in Gladio's guts, and he can barely make himself look at him.

He's a coward, too. He lets Ignis shuffle closer, guides his hands to his bad leg, and then to his shoulder. His field medicine, at least, Ignis remembers perfectly well; his fingers are impersonal and firm, and he runs his hands along Gladio's body with chilly professionalism, declaring the leg broken but the break closed, the shoulder dislocated.

"I can put the shoulder in," he says, "but I can't set the bones properly, not here, and that means no elixirs."

"I know," Gladio says, impatient. "We need to get back to Noct, now."

Ignis' face spasms again. He has a couple of spectacular black eyes beginning to come in, Gladio can't help noticing, bruising clashing oddly with the silver of his burns. "We got dragged a substantial distance, I think. Can you see the bridge?"

Gladio hauls himself up with a pained grunt of effort; the fire throws his shadow ahead of him, long and grotesquely twisted.

"I can see the Glacian," he reports. "Barely, fuck. We've been swept pretty far away."

"Noct must've dealt with the Deathclaw by now," Ignis says, just a bit too even. "But even if he was able to warp down safely afterward, he won't know where to find us. We must make our way to him."

He squints at Gladio and tries to wipe the crusted blood from under his nose, smearing it worse, and stifles a cough. "The lame leading the blind, so to say," he says, and Gladio abruptly doesn't have it in him to be angry with him anymore just now.

"Come here," he says. "I'll fix your nose before you lose your good looks for good."

"A bit too late for that, no?"

But Ignis shuffles closer and suffers Gladio's ministrations with nothing but a cut-off grunt of pain, and politely doesn't comment when Gladio has to lean back and huff his way through the exertion.

"Take a potion," Gladio says, and Ignis shakes his head.

"Our supply is limited, and Noct might have need of it before we're back. Not to mention you. It's fine. And now if you'll allow me to return the favor..."

Gladio does allow him to return the favor, starting with putting his shoulder back in place, and so doesn't remember most of the next hour or so. Ignis is thorough and efficiently kind, and his field medicine knowledge is as good as ever, but immobilizing badly broken bones is just never going to be fun, especially when all they have to their name is a roll of old bandages somehow forgotten in the Armiger.

"We've grown overly reliant on potions," Ignis says, critically, when Gladio swims back to proper consciousness.

"Good luck buying a new first aid kit in Gralea," Gladio pants. "This Firaga is dying down, and we need to haul ass."

"Will you be able to stand up?"

Gladio grimaces. "With your help, yes. Walking is going to suck, though."

Ignis shrugs at him, philosophically, and gets up, smothering a cough in his palm as he rises. Gladio squints at him, but the fit passes as quickly as it arrives, and he supposes it's natural enough.

Neither of them is dressed or shod particularly well for this Shiva-damned weather, but at least, thanks to the Firaga, they are both more or less dry. With luck, when they make it back to the bridge, where Noct will hopefully be waiting ready to warp them up to the train, there will be no frostbite to deal with.

And Noct will wait for them. As angry as Gladio is with Ignis for daring to abandon Noct for his sake, the Deathclaw have been softened down enough not to present any problems to the brat - and if it wasn't so, Gladio's going to hunt Noct down in the afterlife and tear his ears off.

Later. Later. He lets Ignis drag him to his feet and has to blink the stars out of his eyes, waiting for the sickeningly rotating world to settle. Ignis props him without comment, puts his arm around Gladio's middle, and mildly advises him not to put any weight on his bad leg for as long as possible.

Gladio catches his breath, lets Ignis take most of his weight, and tries not to notice that Ignis, under his arm, is noticeably less sturdy than he should be.

"This way," he says, settling on the direction, and off they go.

* * *

Gladio's leg aches ferociously, no matter how carefully he tries to keep his weight off it. Ignis is practically hauling him along, reminding Gladio, in a sort of nostalgic way, about especially grueling Crownsguard obstacle courses, but they have to make their way through unpacked snow, untouched since the moment it fell, and no matter how careful they are, each step is an exercise in pain. Gladio grits his teeth and tries his best to control his sickeningly pulsating vision so he can steer Ignis around roots and other obstacles and look out for stray daemons.

He's surprised they haven't been set upon yet, as it is. The forest, aside from the roar of the river that he can glimpse through the tangle of dead branches to their left, is completely silent, the way no living forest should be. No birds, no curious animals scuttling through the underbrush: it sets his teeth on edge. To think that, if they fall, all forests on Eos will be like that, dark and dead; and yet Noct wouldn't put on the Ring, and Ignis wouldn't shame him into it, and round and round they go, back to the argument he's tired of having.

He'll settle for seeing the brat again, and getting his damned leg set.

Under his arm, Ignis is stomping through the snow with grim, exhausted determination. Despite not asking Gladio for directions, he seems to keep on the straight path pretty decently; it's an improvement on Cartanica, Gladio has to admit (however grudgingly). The side Gladio is plastered against is stiff and frozen; whatever warmth they gathered from their fire has been long leached away by the achingly cold world around them, and even the amount of heat from physical exertion they're generating is not helping.

The Glacian's corpse stubbornly refuses to grow in size, no matter how much Gladio wishes it to, squinting at it over and over through the involuntary tears freezing to his eyelashes. He knows they'll make it, no matter what; they didn't drag Noct half over all of Eos to abandon him now because of some freaking _snow_. But Gladio would _kill_ for some nice tactical gear right now.

He opens his mouth to bitch to Ignis that they should've bought some before going to Gralea, and shuts it again, clicking his teeth together. Ignis, who used to be the only one among them to even know how much money they had at any given time and dealt with all the purchases, will take it as a personal criticism, and Gladio doesn't know what's worse: that it _is_, in a way, or that Ignis will swallow it without challenge, and curl in on himself just a bit more.

Fuck this, Gladio decides, and focuses on walking. He falls into something almost like a working rhythm, half-hopping and half-dragging himself along. The sharp bite of his leg steals his breath every time. He's spectacularly unused to dealing with any kind of long-term pain, thanks to Noct's potions. They're used to shrugging off mortal injuries like it's nothing, one-uping each other's disembowelments and crushed rib cages in after-dinner banter, but Gladio can't remember when he had to deal with something hurting him for more than half an hour at most.

Ignis has this experience now, he thinks, and grinds his teeth, pretending it's due to another awkward, freezing step. Ignis sure does.

Just as he thinks it, Ignis coughs again, a jagged, wet sound that doubles him, dragging Gladio off-balance. Gladio swears and stays upright with a great effort of dexterity.

"The hell?"

"Apologies," Ignis grates out, straightening up. Gladio peers into his face, now that he can see more than the top of Ignis' head, and what he sees there draws him short.

Ignis is as pale as Gladio himself probably is, his lips cracked and dry - and there are two hectic fever spots high on his cheeks.

"The hell," Gladio says again. "Are you sick?"

Ignis shrugs. "It's rather hard to say, under the circumstances. You're not feeling too hot yourself, are you?"

"I'm not feverish, though, and _you_ are."

A suspicion grips him because he _knows_ Ignis all too well. "Did you get injured? Because I swear to Six, if you skimped on the potion because of some economy bullshit, and you're _bleeding_ somewhere..."

He can feel the belligerence climbing into his voice, and halfway expects Ignis to meet him with anger of his own, but Ignis just shakes his head.

"You're taking a potion right now," Gladio says, and dares Ignis to oppose him as he summons one from their dwindling supply.

Ignis stretches his hand for it without argument and smashes it in his fist. Pale blue light shimmers over him, and Gladio feels a bit of relief just from seeing this living bit of Noct's magic - not that he's ever going to mention this to the royal brat - but when it fades, Ignis doesn't look noticeably different.

"Like I said," Ignis said. "It's probably nothing anyway, and we're wasting time."

He refuses to say anything else, and they continue their plodding journey. But Gladio is more alert now, more awake, and he can't stop himself from cataloging every minute lag in Ignis' steps, every hitch of his breath. And now that he's clued into it, he can feel the cough - expertly smothered - shaking Ignis on the inside, small underground earthquakes. His breath is just a bit shorter than it should be.

He doesn't like how silent Ignis is. It makes sense not to talk, to conserve their strength, but the thought of trudging through all these hours of snow wordless gnaws at him. There's been too much silence between all of them as it is, these last weeks.

Gladio is still casting around for something inoffensive to say - ninety percent of the things that come out of his mouth recently are either combative or accusing, he's well aware of that - when Ignis murmurs something, the words snatched away by the wind as soon as they leave his mouth.

"Say again?"

"I know," Ignis says, louder and completely unemotional, like he's prepared the words in his head and is now reading them off a page, stripping them of all meaning, "that I should've stayed by Noct's side. You didn't need to tell me."

_Wow_, Gladio thinks, unsure if Ignis is trying to report his failures up - or sideways, in their case - the chain of command so he could get his reprimand, or just worrying out loud. "Why didn't you? Not that I'm ungrateful I didn't end up frozen fish food, but you damn well knew better. And how did you figure out what happened, anyway?"

"Air," Ignis says like it explains anything, and then shuts up.

He's silent for at least twenty of their laborious steps, and Gladio listens and counts in his head between those underground earthquakes. Whatever's happening is not an injury after all; the potion didn't seem to do anything useful. It would be just their luck if Ignis happened to develop pneumonia or some shit right now, but he was, well. Not hale, but healthy enough, on the train, less a day ago.

On the twentieth step, the cough finally bursts free; Gladio, forewarned, stays upright with minimum fuss, and it's Ignis who sways on his feet, buffeted by the violence of his own lungs.

He straightens up, wipes his mouth. "Is it so hard to believe, that I wouldn't want you to die?"

Gladio blows his breath out, a harsh escalation. "You started this conversation, cut the bullshit. You and me, sure, but between any of us and Noct? You know who you will choose."

He stops, annoyed with himself. They all know who Ignis will choose; it's writ large on Ignis' face, tattooed in his scars for the entire world to see. It's how it _should_ be, even, and yet saying it out loud makes his hands curl into fists.

Ignis lowers his head again, with no denial in him, and Gladio has to concentrate to hear his answer.

"When I realized you fell, I..."

He coughs again, more violently this time. "I couldn't bear the idea of losing anybody else. Of - of Noct losing anybody else."

"Shit," Gladio says.

Ignis continues to drag them along, and Gladio thinks that his every step is just a bit more hesitant, more careful than the previous one. He doesn't like it, and doesn't like the tiny intermittent trembles under his arm even more.

Gladio's abruptly swamped with a sense memory of Altissia - carrying Ignis back to the hotel, the wet slickness of the broken pavement under his feet, Ignis' stuttering, uneven breathing, Prompto laboring under Noct's slight weight to his left. The invading, pervasive sickness of failure, the itching to just reload the entire day - month - year - from a save and start over again, the utterly humiliating knowledge that he can't.

He can't say he doesn't get it, no. And he's sick to death of his own anger.

"Hey," he says. "You know Blondie must be okay, right? He's as tough as they come, and he wouldn't want to miss out. We'll see him again."

It's not his best pep talk, as such things go - but Ignis relaxes, minutely, under his arm, and picks up his pace.

* * *

Several hours later, marginally closer to their destination but nowhere close enough, even Ignis has to admit they're in trouble. He's shivering constantly and coughing every other step, each eruption more unpleasant than the previous one. Gladio keeps expecting to find blood on his lips every time, and when it doesn't happen, he's not relieved. He doesn't like the sound of Ignis' breathing, wet and labored, catching on each exhale.

They keep moving. Gladio offers to take a break when they pass a sturdy-looking fallen tree not covered by snow, but Ignis refuses.

This is pretty much expected. Ignis saying, carefully placing each word between an inhale and an exhale, that he's unsure that he'll get up again if he allows himself to stop, is an unpleasant surprise.

Gladio's leg is so numb but that time it doesn't even hurt anymore; it just feels like an inanimate object, a wooden peg attached to his left knee. The cold creeps into all the empty spaces, hounding Gladio like a living, malicious thing, making his thoughts and movements sluggish and awkward, burrowing into every nook and cranny of Gladio's body and mind. And next to him Ignis stumbles forward with his eyes closed in a way that has nothing to do with his eyesight or lack thereof, as if in a dream.

Their path, just to spite Gladio, starts growing jagged, climbing up and down in little cruel, iced-over slopes, and there aren't even trees or underbrush to hold onto. Numb or not, it takes all Gladio has to keep upright and to warn Ignis about the ups and downs in time for it to be useful. It takes them at least an hour to navigate a patch that Gladio, unhurt, would've skimmed over in fifteen minutes, and the moment they make to even ground, Ignis staggers, raising his head as if he's waking up, and crashes to his knees, taking Gladio down with him.

Gladio howls in pain as he goes down, his bad leg waking up with a vengeance, and by the time he sorts himself out enough to raise himself back to sitting, Ignis is on his hands and knees, half-buried in snow and hacking his lungs out. His back shudders like he's ready to fly apart at any moment, and Gladio, alarmed, sees that his lips are turning blue.

He scoots to Ignis, crabwise, tugs him up and against his chest, rubs Ignis' chest in heavy brisk circles, pushes a punishing knuckle against Ignis' sternum.

Ignis gasps, finally hauling air in, and slumps against Gladio. The blue slowly fades, but this close together, Gladio can feel the brittle fever heat radiating off him.

"Apologies... again..."

"Shhh," Gladio says, "it's okay. Shit, but you're in a bad way."

"Hard to... breathe," and fuck, if Ignis has devolved to the point of stating the obvious, they're really in trouble.

If Noct has ever learned anything from Gladio, he will stick close to the under-bridge instead of haring off to look for them Shiva knows where. Right now Gladio would gladly welcome Noct being stupid and wilderness-ignorant instead.

He presses Ignis closer to himself - when did he last touch Ignis like that, with the closeness and affection of their early journey? - and squints hard. He can just barely make out the hazy outlines of the bridge ahead; the Glacian's dead eyes are staring at the darkening sky.

Maybe he can't bear to lose anything else either. Maybe he never could.

"Iggy," he says, and feels an overwhelming, freezing sadness when Ignis shifts a little in surprise over the long-unused nickname. "You're not going to like it, but you have to ditch me now."

Ignis jerks against him, and even this sharp movement is smoothed over by the pervasive lethargy Gladio can feel rolling from him. "Don't interrupt. I think it's just a couple of hours more to the bridge, maybe less, straight line. If you're not hauling me around, you might just make it. Make yourself a staff or something, keep on the path, you can do it."

"No."

"Shit, Iggy, don't argue with me. I'll sit here, rest my head, wait for you to find Noct. You can take Biggs and Wedge, come back to pick me up."

Ignis half-twists in his arms, enough to give Gladio a sight of his ragged and supremely disapproving profile. "That was our last Firaga, there are no trees around, and you're going to freeze to death."

"Better me than the two of us. Who'll take Noct to the Crystal, huh?"

This is his killer argument, cruel but designed to close the discussion - even Ignis is not insane enough to commit the same infraction twice in a row, not when Noct is concerned - but the way Ignis' face just crumples is still unexpected. He looks like Gladio's just stabbed him, and Gladio _is_ sorry, and there's no other way, and he's sure Ignis knows it.

Ignis tears himself from the circle of Gladio's arms, climbs to his feet, jerky and uneven, a marionette without strings.

"No," he says again, for the first time in ages sounding like the Ignis Gladio knows, like the Ignis Gladio used to rely on, before their entire world fell. "I refuse."

He leans down, hooks his hands under Gladio armpits, and Gladio swears, low and vicious, parks his ass deeper into the snow.

"Gladio," Ignis says, annoyed and crisp, and coughs again. "Either you get up, or I'll sit down here and we'll freeze together. Your choice."

"Dammit, Iggy!.."

"Your choice," Ignis says again, harsh and implacable. "Noct is not losing either of us."

He towers over Gladio, a scraggly scarecrow, swaying a bit, and Gladio sees him as he didn't get to see him on that cursed Altissian altar - horribly sure, horribly burning - and he says, instead of what he ought to, "I missed you, you know," - and lets Ignis haul him up.

They stumble forward, weaving like a pair of cheap drunks, and it's hard to say who's leaning on whom. A stretch of white nothing later, Gladio blinks and realized that the white spots floating in his eyes are real - and cold - it started snowing again.

He turns to Ignis to complain, because _really_, but Ignis is plodding through the snow with daemon-like indifference, a mindless, painful shuffle, and Gladio lets him be.

The snowflakes turn into flurries soon, and then the flurries grow into one howling mass of white, pushing at them on all sides, startlingly animate in its malice. Gladio's eyes are almost as useless as Ignis' are, right now, and he can only pray that they're just lucky enough to still be going in the right direction. It's not as if they have any choice.

He can't hear Ignis over the storm, but he can feel Ignis' breathing all the same, and it has deteriorated into jagged, hacked-off bursts, each inhale more labored than the last one. They're less walking and more swimming through the snow, each step dearly bought, and through the confusion and exhaustion and deadly hypothermic fog of it Gladio resents Ignis for his relentless, mechanical staggering. If only Ignis would admit that he needs rest, that he is just as human - as fragile - as easy to break as the rest of them, they could stop, and maybe sleep for a bit, and then it would be okay. They'd walk the rest of the way easily, if only Ignis wouldn't be so stubborn.

When Ignis falls again, face down into the snow without much fanfare, he does not get up again.

Gladio doesn't fall with him; he sways in the wind, keeping all his weight on his good leg, and stares down at the matted hair on the back of Ignis' head dumbly, his thoughts slow and full of white syrup. The black of Ignis' coat is painted halfway white when its jerky, convulsing up-and-down motion stills, and this is what kicks Gladio out of his reverie.

He curses through his numb lips, drops down, headless of pain or care, and heaves Ignis out of the snow, turns him over. Ignis' lips are blue, and there's snow caught in his open eyes, painted in the grooves of his scars, and his chest is utterly still.

"Fuck you," Gladio growls, "you fucking liar, you," - he reaches for the Armiger, but he's too cold and too far gone, and he can't find the right thread to pull. He leans over Ignis instead, sets his palms on Ignis chest, and pushes - count, push, count - he can feel the heavy gurgle of liquid in Ignis' lungs, and he knows what's happening to him, and knows that there's nothing he can do anyway, and doesn't give a single Six-damned fuck. He tilts Ignis' head back, breathes into his slack mouth, each freezing exhale cutting his throat - catches his rhythm, pushes again, breathes again, cracking Ignis' ribs under his palms. The effort leaves nothing in his mind but an endless, meaningless litany of _liar liar liar liar_, _liar_ on the exhale and on the inhale, on the push, and his arms burn and his leg burns and his lungs burn and he's going to fail, they're both going to fail, no matter how much they try.

Ignis is stubbornly still.

The lassitude starts creeping back in, whispering into Gladio's ear that it will be okay to give up now - to stop, to lie in the snow next to Ignis and rest. Surely Noct would understand? Surely they did their best?

He fights it, moves his leaden arms, breathes air into Ignis' still mouth against all hope - and then, just at the outer edge of his hope and his strength, there are voices and light.

Somebody is tugging at his shoulders, dragging him away from Ignis - from Ignis' body - he fights them, sluggish and confused, until Noct snaps "Gladio!" at him like an order, and he has to listen.

"Specs!" - Noct, high and frantic, a whirlwind of black and white, and Gladio croaks, "Water - water in his lungs," and starts coughing his own lungs out.

He can't tell if he's heard and understood, but there's a tug on the Armiger that reverberates in his very bones, and he sees Phoenix Down's scorching fire settle over Ignis and burn him clean.

Ignis seizes, arching up, and his first inhale is the loudest thing in the entire world.

Gladio closes his eyes.

* * *

When Gladio wakes up, it's to the darkness of their train cabin. He came to thoroughly dislike it on their trip, but right now he's ready to kiss every inch and every strut of its drab walls. He takes a languid moment to just stare at the bottom of the top bunk over his face - he's _warm_, down to his very toes, and his leg tingles with the familiar warmth of successful healing.

Made it. How's that for the lame leading the blind, huh, Ignis, he thinks, the urge to laugh rising in him.

Finally he turns his head - to see Ignis sleeping on the other bunk, curled up and completely dead to the world. For once he looks like he's truly asleep and not just laid out by exhaustion in the final round, and tenderness bubbles up in Gladio, for once clean and free of anger or guilt.

Noct's sitting on the floor between their bunks, and the moonlight catches on the Ring of Lucii he keeps tossing up and catching over and over again.

"Hey," Gladio says, and grins when the Ring clatters to the floor and Noct whirls around to face him, all round eyes and startled questions. Somebody's going to have to crawl under the bunks and look for the royal jewelry amidst the dust and debris, and Gladio doesn't care in a slightest.

"Good job finding us,"he says. "Great timing, too."

"Gladio," Noct says, and stops; it's like Gladio is seeing him properly for the first time in days, the dark rings under his eyes, the painful sharpness of the bones under his skin.

He turns to the side, groaning a bit when his cramped up muscles protest, and puts a hand on Noct's shoulder, tugs him closer.

"Hey," he says again. "We won't leave you, you know that, right? And you won't leave us."

Noct slumps against the edge of his bunk, hiding his face, and mumbles something too low for Gladio to catch. It doesn't matter anyway. Tomorrow they're going to pull into Tenebrae, and get Prompto from whatever trouble he's in, and get Ignis a new cane and a new visor, and share food, and play cards, and tell stories to each other.

For now, Gladio holds Noct close, and Ignis sleeps without pain, and the train bearing them runs straight and true.


End file.
